Fernando Alonso has admitted that there are issues with the Aston Martin Formula 1 car that the team will “have to keep until the end of the year.”
The two-time F1 champion has had a torrid start to the 2025 season. The Spanish Grand Prix marked his first points of the year with a ninth-place finish in front of his home crowd, after suffering from three retirements in the previous eight races.
Despite his impressive finish in Barcelona, Alonso admitted that the AMR25 still lacks straight-line speed. While speaking to Motorsport.com and other media in Canada, the Aston Martin driver discussed whether this could be addressed by the team.
“I think it’s a combination of a few things. Probably the efficiency is not what we expected on this car,” he explained.
“The level of downforce we need to run sometimes is higher than what we’d love to. But to have some kind of grip in the corners, we need to sacrifice the straights. In qualifying you open the DRS and you’re not penalised too much, but in the race we do see a bit of a handicap.
“There are a couple of ideas to improve this year’s car without compromising time for next year. But yeah, there are complications in the 2025 car we’ll have to keep until the end of the year.”
One of the biggest changes in the Silverstone outfit for the 2026 car comes in the shape of former Red Bull CTO Adrian Newey, who joined the team as managing technical partner. He arrived at the team earlier this year, but remains focussed on the 2026 regulation change rather than this year’s car.
Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin Racing
Photo by: Peter Fox / Getty Images
“A lot of the motivation we have next year is thanks to him [Newey],” Alonso added.
“With all the difficulties we have this year, to have him onboard and looking at next year’s car – it gives us confidence. The expectations will be high. It will be new for everybody, so we are optimistic – but with our feet on the ground. We know how far behind we are now. Even with a regulation change, we need to find better performance with this year’s car.
“We need to be better as a team. Even if we have a fast car in the future, there are a couple of areas we need to keep improving. So we are trying to use 2025 to tackle all of those problems and be ready for him [Newey] as well, as a team.”
